Connecting the cameras

Connecting USB cameras

The camera utility can discover USB (web) cameras which are directly connected to a USB port on the host server.

In practice, the software scans the linux OS for video devices from /dev/video0 until /dev/video9, i.e the first 10 connected USB devices.

If a device exists, the utility will try to open the device as a camera. If this works, it’s reported as an available camera.

The scanning will produce warnings when incompatible devices are scanned - you can ignore those warnings.

Scan for USB cameras

Run on Edge Server

On the edge server, use the v2l4 tool to check if the camera is connected and is detected.
```
 sudo apt-get install v4l-utils
 v4l2-ctl --list-devices
```
The output should be similar to this:
```
 Logitech Webcam C930e (usb-0000:00:14.0-8):
   /dev/video0
   /dev/video1
   /dev/media0
```
Note: Depending on your server, you might have to reboot with the USB camera connected. In some instances, hot-plug does not work correctly.

Open a shell to the camera utility container

 kubectl exec -it -n $NAMESPACE viai-camera-integration-0 -- /bin/bash

From the utility container, scan the local server for USB cameras

 python3 camera_client.py --protocol usb --scan

The output should be similar to this:

 Discovering USB cameras..
 USB cameras found:
 Address: /dev/video0 | Model: Logitech Webcam C930e | # of Properties: 275

The example above shows a valid camera connected to /dev/video0

With the information from the last step, you can start to Collect images for training in the next section.

Optionally, you can continue reading to understand how to manage the configuration of a USB camera:

Managing the configuration of USB cameras

The VIAI Edge utility supports reading and writing camera runtime configurations for Genicam and USB cameras.

Run on Edge Server

On the edge server do the following:

Query the camera’s current runtime configurations and output them to an editable text file (replace the device address with your value, usually /dev/video0)

  python3 camera_client.py --protocol usb --address /dev/video0 --device_id cam1 --mode none  \
      --cfg_read --cfg_read_file /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg 2>/dev/null

The output should be similar to:

  2022-09-13 02:59:42,296 - root - INFO - USB cameras found: ['/dev/video0']
  Using camera: /dev/video0
  INFO:root:Querying camera runtime configs and saving to: /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg

Verify the generated camera configuration file

  head -5 /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg

The output should be similar to:

  CAP_PROP_APERTURE = -1.0
  CAP_PROP_AUTOFOCUS = 1.0
  CAP_PROP_AUTO_EXPOSURE = 3.0
  CAP_PROP_AUTO_WB = 1.0
  CAP_PROP_BACKEND = 200.0

To change a configuration parameter value, edit the generated configuration file with your favorite editor
```
  vi /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg
```

Write the updated configuration back to the camera

  python3 camera_client.py --protocol usb --address /dev/video0 --device_id cam1 --mode none \
      --cfg_write --cfg_write_file /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg 2>/dev/null

The output should be similar to this:

  2022-09-13 03:01:34,150 - root - INFO - Reading config from input file: /var/lib/viai/camera-config/current.cfg
  INFO:root:Writing config to the camera: CAP_PROP_APERTURE = -1.0
  INFO:root:Writing config to the camera: CAP_PROP_AUTOFOCUS = 1.0
  ...